Spanish architects make hay with Wheat City project
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2016 (3574 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Architects from Barcelona, Spain, have spent the last two weeks building a wooden and straw bale structure at the Riverbank Discovery Centre after winning the Brandon bid in a provincial architecture competition.
The Cool Gardens contest, organized by Storefront Manitoba, is an effort to encourage people to reconsider their environment from a contemporary perspective. A jury for the international competition evaluated the designs submitted for each location before choosing a winner.
Brandon’s architects, Marta Mila and Marc Torrellas, won for their design of the Wheat Lookout, which will feature a terrace and second-level viewpoint over the river.
“We discovered that Brandon is popularly called the Wheat City, so we decided to do something with straw bales because we wanted to show the real heritage of Brandon. From everything that we read, we thought that Brandon was industrial and also agricultural, so we tried to manage with the two basic materials that were pallets and straw bales to combine the industrial and agricultural essence,” said Mila.
The couple arrived in Manitoba in mid-June, and spent their first week adjusting their design after seeing the exact environment and materials they’d be working with.
The project has a budget of $8,500, with the majority of the expense caused by the carpentry work.
The rest of the labour is being done by the pair and any volunteers who are interested.
When it’s done, the structure will consist of approximately 240 bales and will stand until it’s dismantled in September.
“Taking part in this kind
of installation lets you
imagine something different,” explained Torrellas.
Mila and Torrellas currently work for two different companies, but enter three or four competitions every year to build their experience. According to the couple, it is hard for young architects to compete with big companies in Spain.
The pair hope to have the structure completed today or Tuesday.
Lois MacDonald, general manager of the Riverbank Discovery Centre, invited the public to come see the Wheat Lookout, which she described as “a good fit” for the centre.
“It’s interesting in that it’s connected to our city … and it creates a lookout. So obviously, a big part of what people do when they come to the Discovery Centre and want to experience the habitat that surrounds the Discovery Centre is to watch and observe the birds and the animals and all of the different species that call the habitat home.”
This is the fourth annual competition, and the first site that has been located in Brandon, which cost the centre $10,000 to enter.
» aantoneshyn@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @AAntoneshyn